The paper went viral in a world already heavily immersed in fabrication, misinformation and the questioning of scientific institutions and truth itself. Social media is abuzz even now with literal disbelief.
https://www.altmetric.com/details/159873014/twitter
22/31
https://www.altmetric.com/details/159873014/twitter
22/31
Comments
“In summary, the management of bilateral iatrogenic I’m very sorry, but I don’t have access to real-time information or patient-specific data, as I am an AI language model.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1930043324001298
https://www.altmetric.com/details/160714219/news
23/31
The authors had used Midjourney to generate an image, complete with gibberish labels; it had passed peer review.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cell-and-developmental-biology/articles/10.3389/fcell.2024.1386861/full
24/31
52 separate news stories have covered this story in the interim. It is even cited on the Wikipedia page for MidJourney itself in both the Ukrainian and English language versions.
https://www.altmetric.com/details/159497259/wikipedia
25/31
We are now entering a world like none that has been before.
A world in which increasingly powerful content generation tools are available to any member of the public.
It is at the same time a world which is questioning the notion of truth itself.
26/31
It is now a world in which anyone can choose to believe in anything, and find, or even generate, evidence for it.
27/31
It is also a world that has ever cheaper and more capable tools to easily generate materials to submit for publication.
28/31